


this life, it's mine

by magisterequitum



Category: Justified
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-16
Updated: 2011-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-19 11:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for all of Season Two. She's not the sort of woman to sit around and do nothing when there's a sawed off in her hand and damage to be done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this life, it's mine

“Stay in the cellar,” he tells her.

Ava doesn’t and had never planned on doing that.

That’s both the problem and not the problem.

 

 

 

She comes up the stairs and nearly gets shot by the man Boyd left to guard the inside of the house. He tells her to go back down, repeats the phrase and threat that his leader had left him with, and it makes her want to curl her lips back over her teeth. This is her house and she’ll be damned if she takes orders from anyone. She doesn’t want to go back down in the cellar where her only options are sitting on an old box of clothes or pacing around the metal drain in the cement floor. Waiting is not her strong point.

Her hand tightens on the shotgun and she tells him, Devil, that she won’t be going back down there. She’ll guard from the back as he guards from the front, and he has no choice but to back down from the steel in her statement that doesn’t allow for anything but agreement.

It’s coffee she goes for and it’s the goddamn coffee that distracts her from noticing the men creeping through the backyard. They see her, and then she’s on the kitchen floor. It’s like months ago when she’d been back in that cabin with Bo Crowder dead in the front yard.

There's shouts and gun shots and Dickie Bennett and suddenly there’s a burning feeling on the left side of her chest. She gasps and falls heavy against the cabinets, the metal knob digging into her spine.

Two thoughts race through Ava’s mind: that Dickie Bennett just shot her in her own fucking kitchen and that he didn’t even have the courtesy to wait for her to reach the shotgun just out of reach to blow his goddamn head off.

Ava’s not sure which one bothers her the most.

The gun Helen gave her mocks her from two feet away.

 

 

 

“I’m sorry,” she says and tries not to move on the couch.

“You’re sorry?” Boyd’s thumb strokes her knuckles, hand clutching hers. She can barely feel it when he presses his lips to her cold skin.

Ava wants to laugh, but she’s forgotten how to and it hurts so much. Instead she chokes out his earlier order to stay in the cellar.

Why, why, why, he asks, but the answer is already there. She’s not the sort of woman to sit around and do nothing when there’s a sawed off in her hand and damage to be done.

He yells out for the name of the person who did this. It’s loud from where they’ve been talking in whispered breathes. She’s forgotten the other people in her house.

Dickie Bennett. Dickie fucking Bennett.

There’s anger and fear in Boyd’s eyes, but the former burns more than the latter. Good, she thinks, if she can’t kill him she’ll settle for Boyd taking care of him. And she has no doubt that Dickie is dead or will be dead.

Boyd promises her he’ll be back and that he’s found help for her. She’s going to be fine, he tells her, smooths the hair from her face and kisses her, lips tight and hard.

She believes him. No lies, they’d said. She believes him.

 

 

 

They lay her out on the dining room table. This too makes her want to laugh. The table has seen so much and now her blood is slowly seeping into the wooden grain beneath her.

The man says to be still. She thinks that’s hard to do when he’s poking and prodding and has his fingers in her.

The bullet makes a dull sound when it thuds onto the table.

 

 

 

Ava wakes briefly to the sensation of being carried.

It’s Boyd, and she wonders when he returned and then how long she’s been out of it and what all has gone down since the table. He holds her tight, and it’s because he’s not going to let anyone else touch her. They go slowly, so slowly, up the stairs. He doesn’t want to cause her any more pain; this she can read in his eyes.

She wants to tell him she doesn’t blame him. She knew what she was getting into, Helen’s words ringing in her ears, and she’s a big girl with her own mind and own decisions and choices.

She wants to tell him this, but she can’t get the words past her lips.

 

 

 

Want turns into need very quickly.

It becomes apparent that Boyd’s blaming himself for the stitches that now run along the left side of her chest. Ava’s confined to the bed upstairs and it’s infuriating in that way the no one likes to not be able to move around in their own house.

It’s troublesome that she can see the guilt in his eyes in the rare times that he does look straight at her; he’s never been hard for her to figure out. Most of the time she is asleep, and she knows that he sits in the chair next to the bed because she’s caught him the few times that she’s been able to. When she’s awake he won’t be in the same room.

Ava needs to make it very clear that she does not regret her choices. Sure, she could have stayed in the basement, no one likes to get shot, but that was never going to happen. She could have kicked Boyd out when he showed up on her porch after the shootout at his daddy’s place. She could have sent him packing when he returned to his old ways, when the gossip down at the store of trading one Crowder for the other and that she wouldn’t even have to change her name got to be too much.

She could have done a lot of things different but she doesn’t care for that. She’s not the woman that Raylan saw when he first returned. She doesn’t need anyone to save her and she’s tired of being that type of person. She takes care of herself.

Boyd is hers and she is his. People might have a problem with that, do have a problem with it, but then she doesn’t really mind what other people care.

 

 

 

When Ava can walk again and move around, Boyd avoids her. It’s as if now that he can see she’s not actually going to fade away or die he can be somewhat more at ease. There’s still guilt that reflects from behind green eyes. It’s written all over the sharp lines of his face.

He leaves the house, goes to settle the dust and take what’s his now. If he’s not there, she can’t force the conversation, and she knows that’s what he’s doing. The silence is oppressive. It makes her think of the time he left after she told him to get gone over breakfast and eggs.

Ava hates it.

“Goddammit,” she says and breaks the glass she’s trying to put away.

She won’t stand for it.

 

 

 

Nothing remains of the Bennett clan except for Dickie, which means that nothing really remains. Doyle takes a bullet in the forehead from a sniper, Mags poisons herself, and Dickie goes to jail. The Bennetts are done and over with. Raylan goes back to Lexington. There is no power vacuum as it’s quickly claimed by the Crowders.

Dickie’s killed after three weeks, done in at the hands of a fellow inmate. No one is surprised.

Life goes on in Harlan as it always has, unchanging and unfazed and unforgiving, just new old faces and old new names at the top now.

 

 

 

Ava corners him on the front porch one evening when he’s there.

He’s sitting on the swinging chair, one foot idly pushing off from the planks, reading from the open book in his lap. She watches the way his long fingers turn the pages, smooth them down from the mild wind of the night. He hasn’t touched her since before and that’s left an itch under her skin.

She takes the book and moves it to the side, sets herself down in his lap while he stares at her with steady eyes. She places her hands on his shoulders.

“Ava,” he breathes out and her name joins the sounds of the crickets in the yard.

“Enough,” she says, strength in her voice making it a statement with no question.

His fingers settle on her waist, thumbs pressing on the sharp bones of her hips. He says nothing in response, but she can tell, see, that he knows what she means. His eyes, his face, have always told everything for her. He’s smart. He knows what she means, as surely as when they had previous conversations about lying and truth and promises and us not I.

She kisses him, there on the front porch, her bare toes resting on the top of his boots.

“Oh, Ava,” he sighs.

This is her choice.


End file.
